Celebrity Sanctum

This song is off the Dogs Die In Hot Cars album “Please Describe Yourself”. At its base, like quite a few other songs I’ve written, it’s inspired by the feel of John Frusciante’s music. Notably songs from his album “To record only water for ten days”. Here’s one of the tracks off it.  And here’s a song off his new album – The Empyrean.
The sound recording of the set gets better as it goes

Earl Grey

Trials and Errors

This song is from the Dogs Die In Hot Cars is making Pop Nonsense Project.

Lightness In Weight

This song was a B-side to the Dogs Die In Hot Cars single, “I Love you ’cause I have to”

Apples and Oranges

This track is off the Dogs Die In Hot Cars first album, “Please Describe Yourself”.  The title of the song gets its name from a night at the pub with Lee Worrall (Bassist in Dogs), my father and his partner – At some point we started ranting about art and how people define it, as you do. And my dad’s partner said the words “It’s Apples and Oranges”. I liked that. I nicked it and wrote a song about this subject. Musically, it’s foundations were inspired by the feeling I got from the song “What a day that was” from the album “The Catherine Wheel” by David Byrne. Although more like the Talking Heads version that you can watch here. I liked the way it builds. In the Dogs recording there is brass that swirls around throughout the song. That was inspired by the sounds and rhythms of things by Philip Glass and Steve Reich. Like this , and this

The Lie

“Once upon a time” by Blueberry Hill

Track 1 – Black Snow

I remember when we were about 18, rehearsing in Ross Bald’s (bassist at the time) parent’s basement down by Wormit harbour, and a DJ from Radio Tay called Sean Ray came over to listen to us. We were well excited. He said some encouraging things to us and something that has always stuck with me – if you can write a decent tune with three chords then you’re on to something. This song has two.

The leading cat is Richard Parker, my son.

Track 2 – Don’t Turn Back

I still get confused thinking about how best to start the process of composing. Seems to me there has been no specific way that I’ve followed, but I’d like to think the method I used for this track will become the main way forward for me. I started out instrumentally, with the guitar plucky part, structuring the progressions, getting it sounding interesting on it own. Then I basically jammed over it with various guitar tracks, kept in the bits that I liked, deleted the rest and put a few of them in reverse to see how that sounded too – I love reverse guitar – massively inspired by John Frusciante, especially his first solo album “Niandra La Des and Usually just a T-shirt”. (this, by the by, was exactly the same way I made the Boots advert song – Nobody Teaches Life Anything) So out of those guitar sounds, the vocal melodies really just wrote themselves. Then I played around with Logic – For the past 10 years I’ve used the digital audio workstation called Cubase but I never managed to get my head around it’s technical side (not having a good attention span for that kind of thing) and so I never felt I could get the most out of it. Logic, in contrast, reminds me of playdoh. This song is my first proper outing on the program, experimenting with what it can do, it’s sounds and samples.

Track 3 – Earl Grey

With the way I was feeling at the time, this song just seemed to write itself.

In the silent love life. In the corners of my wheels, I hear you.

Like a distant sound of wind upon the trees. Blinks of life. Blind eyes see.

Maybe I am calling, calling, running like I’m running free.

But I don’t know if it’s here.

But it feels like something out there satifies.

I can see myself falling, falling, running by.

Colours all in one direction, so it seems

Bad dreams to me are you.

Bad dreams to me are you.

But I don’t know how much sugar you take in your Earl Grey.

Track 4 – Just A Kiss

I remember when I was about 15, my first love stayed over at my house and we did nothing but kiss throughout the whole night. Maybe it wasn’t quite 10 hours solid petting but definitely at least 6. Wonderful. I never felt I was a particularly nostalgic person but this song and the accompanying video reek of the stuff. Musically it was inspired by things M.I.A. Unfortunately, I bit off more than I could chew in the mixing process, but if you listen to it in headphones you can almost get there.

Track 5 – If You Don’t Take Responsibility For The Errors That You Make Then All The Good You Do Is A Fraud

How can one be bored when ants do this?

Written using the same method I used for “Don’t Turn Back” . The flute is inspired by the beautiful flutage on the songs “All good things (come to an end)” by Nelly Furtado and “Breaking the girl” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Track 6 – Forget Yourself

Terrence Trent D’Arby adopted the name Sananda Maitreya, following a series of dreams and he legally changed his name to Sananda Maitreya on October 4, 2001. He proclaimed in an interview that “Terence Trent D’Arby was dead…he watched his suffering as he died a noble death”, in what was perceived as an attempt to reinvent himself artistically and free himself from what he believed to be the oppressive nature of the record business

Maitreya currently lives in Milan, Italy where he continues to create music. Since the early stages of his music career he has always written, composed, arranged and produced all his tracks. In his later albums such as Angels & Vampires and Nigor Mortis he also played all instruments. He is also currently touring with his band ‘The Nudge Nudge’ around Europe to present his new music called ‘Post Millennium Rock’.

Track 7 . The Magical Labyrinth Is Guiding Me To You

Solsbury Hill by Peter Gabriel is one of my favourite songs and this is an attempt of mine at trying to capture some of it’s bittersweet journey feel.

More kissing – I know this video could have been a bit more appealing on the eye but to have done that it would have meant editing and I wanted it to be one long take. I love long takes. To me that’s cinematic immersion. frigg 3d. If you love long takes also – here’s a great site that shows some classics.

Track 8 – Sangrar Mi Conrazón

I love the piano ballet in this song. I wish I could have played it. I usually don’t like being too dependent on samples as I find it limits the way I like to work but with this track I didn’t have that problem, probably thanks to having to write and record it on the conditions of the album.

The thing I love about this video is that usually when you film in public, people in the background look on at what you are doing with suspicion, or even worse, murder in their eyes. I do. But with this, everyone is loving it. It was great.

Track 9 – The Lie

Love is like a game of twister.